Tips and Tricks to Make Massive Sound More Like the Access Virus

In this tutorial, Echo Sound Works will show you some tips and tricks to make Massive sound more like a Virus. Hopefully your CPU can keep up!

The Access Virus is the holy grail of modern hardware synthesizers. For those of us who do not own one, but lust after it’s thick sound, you can get Massive to sound close. Even though it’s never easy to get a soft synth to sound like a hardware one, with these tips and tricks you can make Massive sound more like a Virus.

TIP #1: Instead of blending 3 separate wavetables together in one instance of Massive, it helps to use multiple instances using different waveforms in each instance. I typically use 3, one center and two panned. I will usually have the center instance using three stacks of the same wavetable, for example the PWM. The panned instances of Massive will have three stacks of the same wavetables as well, but the left and right will use different waveforms. This applies to leads, basses, plucks etc. I think this gets closer to a Virus sound because it is capable of up to 3 Oscillators per voice. So this technique is looking at each instance of Massive being it’s own 3 oscillator voice.

TIP #2: Increase the Voices as high as they can go on your system. By default, Massive sets up with 16 voices. A Virus can have up to 90. I will typically use 32 to 40 and render to audio if I need to. But having 3 instances of Massive with 32 Voices means you have a total of 96 voices!

TIP #3: Detune in your oscillators using an LFO. This will get a slightly thicker and bigger feel and ultimately, make Massive sound more like a Virus.